00:00:00 ◼ ► Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development. I'm Mark Orment.
00:00:05 ◼ ► And I'm David Smith. Under the Radar is never longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.
00:00:19 ◼ ► The version numbers are the best, but the result of the content of that update is amazing.
00:00:24 ◼ ► So this is the final, the overcast, redesign part one update that we've talked about bits
00:00:31 ◼ ► and pieces of over the last couple of weeks, but it's finally out. And congratulations.
00:00:36 ◼ ► It's super cool. And it seems like the response to it has been super positive. So that's awesome
00:00:43 ◼ ► Thank you. Yeah, I'm ridiculously relieved. I was so nervous to ship this, you know, because
00:00:59 ◼ ► it's a pretty large update. It's the largest single update I've done in a pretty long time
00:01:03 ◼ ► and possibly ever. And so it was a really big deal for me. And I was nervous, you know,
00:01:10 ◼ ► because I'd been running it only myself for a while. I've been working on it since around
00:01:21 ◼ ► ago or so, I started a semi-public beta. So I'm linking a couple thousand people on the
00:01:27 ◼ ► beta and then people reporting issues and giving feedback mostly in my beta Slack channel,
00:01:59 ◼ ► press circuit. And it did get a lot of press. But I didn't know if it was going to be positive
00:02:03 ◼ ► or not. Then it gets out to the whole public and now it's out to the whole user base. And
00:02:07 ◼ ► certainly the reaction from the beta group was very positive. The reaction from the press
00:02:12 ◼ ► was very positive. The reaction from the overall user base percentage-wise is very positive.
00:02:20 ◼ ► But of course, I'm getting many messages on Twitter and email from people who don't like
00:02:24 ◼ ► it just because it's still a small percentage, but it's a small percentage of a bigger number.
00:02:29 ◼ ► And so I'm still hearing from a lot of individual people who don't like certain parts of it.
00:02:34 ◼ ► But I've had a lot of really interesting takeaways from this process. I mean, it's not only,
00:02:40 ◼ ► you know, obviously sitting on something for, what has it been, five months or whatever
00:02:49 ◼ ► at once. There's issues with that. But for the most part, most of those things have gone
00:02:54 ◼ ► pretty well. You know, the number of bugs has been pretty low. The weirdness on servers
00:03:05 ◼ ► I felt very confident in this design. I think it looks great and I'm very happy with it.
00:03:10 ◼ ► But it also kind of felt like my admitting to the world or presenting myself to the world
00:03:17 ◼ ► as a semi-designer. And we talked about this before, like being developers first. And my
00:03:25 ◼ ► design skills were pretty bad when I was first putting apps out. And I've slowly worked
00:03:37 ◼ ► great designer, but I think now I've reached the point where I am decent at it. And I've
00:04:06 ◼ ► non-nerds use, like this is kind of how this, the genesis of this new design idea was that
00:04:12 ◼ ► my wife, Tiff, and I were on a vacation right before Thanksgiving. And she was showing me
00:04:19 ◼ ► But she was showing me an app that had these big pills for navigation between sections.
00:04:47 ◼ ► And so like that night, I whipped together like, you know, a quick version of it in Overcast,
00:04:57 ◼ ► looks amazing." I put it on my phone, and I showed Tiff the next day at lunch. And she's
00:05:01 ◼ ► like, "Yeah, that's great. Go that direction." And so that kind of the genesis of this. I
00:05:22 ◼ ► how I was giving up my custom font for the system font. But San Francisco as a base font
00:05:44 ◼ ► four, six, and nine digits, which has instead of the little curly ends on the six and nine,
00:05:51 ◼ ► it does straight ends. And on the four, it like opens up the top instead of being a closed
00:06:08 ◼ ► time stamps. So that's why I went that direction on that. But I think I was able to get a lot
00:06:12 ◼ ► of personality out of SF Rounded that I wasn't getting from regular San Francisco. And then
00:06:18 ◼ ► that made up the personality gap that I was seeking. And so this all kind of came together
00:06:21 ◼ ► with like using SF symbols for the icons everywhere, using SF Rounded with the alternative glyphs
00:06:31 ◼ ► with how it turned out. And so far, the reactions, you know, in, you know, press and reviews
00:06:53 ◼ ► Because whenever you change anything that's been I mean, look, this design has been mostly
00:06:57 ◼ ► unchanged since Overcast 1.0 in 2014. I mean, I designed that basically for iOS seven. And,
00:07:05 ◼ ► you know, the world has moved on quite a bit since then, in terms of what you know, how
00:07:08 ◼ ► apps should be designed now. But so you know, so I had no choice but to change it if I wanted
00:07:18 ◼ ► you know, a lot of a lot of people are understandably just change change averse and tired of change
00:07:24 ◼ ► for the sake of change because so much in the tech world changes all the time, oftentimes
00:07:29 ◼ ► just for the sake of change and not making things actually better, or sometimes actually
00:07:33 ◼ ► making things worse for people. So you know, there's some fatigue there, which I understand.
00:07:43 ◼ ► on the home screen. And a lot of people didn't want to spend the space on that. And there
00:07:52 ◼ ► And so I put it in a not a very good place. And so I actually yesterday I shipped an update
00:08:19 ◼ ► nerds is like space inefficient layouts, layouts that have very low information density, where
00:08:26 ◼ ► you have to do much more scrolling or swiping to get to the stuff that you could otherwise
00:08:29 ◼ ► before fit on one screen. Now, a lot of the the negative reaction to the design was you
00:08:35 ◼ ► made everything bigger. And actually, playlists, podcasts and episode cells are all the exact
00:08:44 ◼ ► same heights as the previous design. And like on my market org post, I actually showed side
00:08:53 ◼ ► because they now have this pill shape on the playlist, and it looks bigger, it looks more
00:08:59 ◼ ► tangible, because it's now it's this object, you know, and it's more colorful, and there's
00:09:03 ◼ ► an icon. And so it's actually the same total height, including the margins, the same total
00:09:11 ◼ ► could before. But because it looks different, people think it is taller, and they think
00:09:17 ◼ ► it's less information dense. And so that's been an interesting side effect. And I don't
00:09:26 ◼ ► mean, those who have written in I've responded with, you know, this little text painter template,
00:09:30 ◼ ► basically, like, you know, actually here, you know, these are actually the same height,
00:09:37 ◼ ► do. But otherwise, you know, with those exceptions of like, you know, a little bit of negative
00:09:46 ◼ ► to have it out there. And I'm not, you know, as I've mentioned in the past, I'm not done
00:10:13 ◼ ► change because they don't like change. And that's fair enough. And that's just the reality.
00:10:17 ◼ ► But you can't keep a design for, you know, a decade, half a decade, a decade, just because
00:10:26 ◼ ► many ways, like I've been using it since you started the beta test. And it feels very much
00:10:37 ◼ ► up with something new for newness sake, it feels very much more like you. It's like the
00:10:50 ◼ ► go and build the sidewalks there. This feels very much like an app like a redesign that
00:11:08 ◼ ► things that were frustrating. And you've rounded those off and made them better. Like, for
00:11:19 ◼ ► so much more sort of scannable, because I can use different colors and different glyphs
00:11:23 ◼ ► for each of my playlists, it makes it really easy without really having to pay attention
00:11:34 ◼ ► an efficiency that has made it so much clearer. And then the recent section, personally, I
00:11:40 ◼ ► love it for the same reason I love your widget, is like 90% of the time that I'm using Overcast,
00:11:47 ◼ ► what do I want to do? I'd either listen to the last thing I was listening to, or I want
00:11:57 ◼ ► either I'm going to resume where I was doing or, oh, it's, you know, it's the new episode
00:12:07 ◼ ► do it from the widget or now in the app itself. It's like, that's the number one thing that
00:12:11 ◼ ► I do is now super easy to do. And it feels like that sort of that rounding off of things
00:12:21 ◼ ► growth rather than a redesign that just is like, we've come up with this whole new paradigm
00:12:25 ◼ ► for how you're going to listen to, you know, listen to playlists, we're going to put them
00:12:29 ◼ ► into a chronological timeline feed, and then we're going to algorithmically read, you know,
00:12:33 ◼ ► read, it's like you haven't tried to reinvent it, you've just made it better. And so, you
00:12:37 ◼ ► know, put me into the category of I love the redesign, I think it's good. And I think there's
00:12:42 ◼ ► definitely going to be a, you know, a gradual period where people have to adapt to it. But
00:12:46 ◼ ► overall, because I think it's coming from that place of improving the most common operations,
00:13:06 ◼ ► This has dogged me for eight years, like since 1.0 came out almost eight years ago. People
00:13:15 ◼ ► have been asking, how do you mark an episode as played without playing it? A lot of people,
00:13:21 ◼ ► deleting was enough. But a lot of people really want the distinction of, I don't want to just
00:13:29 ◼ ► delete this, I want to show up as played in the list. And I don't want to and people want
00:13:34 ◼ ► that so badly that they would often open it up, scan to the end, let it hit the end. And
00:13:45 ◼ ► at once, like if they wanted to, like, you know, fix up, you know, their set, their status
00:13:48 ◼ ► of a whole season of something or whatever. And so, you know, integrating Marcus played
00:13:52 ◼ ► as like a very high level feature, like it's prominent in the interface, gets its own button
00:13:57 ◼ ► next to the delete button, you know, that kind of thing. That was a pretty large change.
00:14:08 ◼ ► played? I really need this feature or I can't figure out. Like people were often confused,
00:14:11 ◼ ► like the idea of the feature not even being there didn't enter their mind. So they weren't
00:14:19 ◼ ► this? It was so obvious to them this had to be there. And so for eight years, it wasn't.
00:14:28 ◼ ► ability to manually drag them around to reorder them. That's something that people have been
00:14:33 ◼ ► showing me over over the last few years, like they've been just hacking it by by putting
00:14:41 ◼ ► of icons, people would would like start their titles with an emoji, you know, because I
00:14:46 ◼ ► didn't, I didn't offer icon support until now. And, and so there were all sorts of hacks
00:14:55 ◼ ► was ultimately like, first of all, let's get let's get rid of the need to do most of those
00:14:59 ◼ ► hacks and make this easier for people. And second of all, try to make it even more flexible
00:15:04 ◼ ► to accommodate even more preferences and patterns that people want to do that aren't the way
00:15:11 ◼ ► I use it. So that's why you know, playlists became much more flexible, the Marcus played
00:15:15 ◼ ► thing, reorderable, pinable podcasts, which I have paid no podcasts in my list, but everyone's
00:15:25 ◼ ► on the main screen. And reordering podcasts when the list is dynamic, is a little tricky.
00:15:30 ◼ ► That's why so now I have like a pinned option, and then you can reorder the pinned ones.
00:15:34 ◼ ► So you know, there's like a way to accommodate what people want to do without introducing
00:15:37 ◼ ► weird edge cases and stuff like that. So this is very much an update of like, let me let
00:15:51 ◼ ► but who are still trying to use the app for you know, for something else. Anyway, we are
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00:17:32 ◼ ► Yeah, and I think what you're doing here is naturally going to get that kind of feedback
00:17:37 ◼ ► because when you're, you know, with Marcus played, for so long, the app has been optimized
00:17:43 ◼ ► for like 10% of its users, the people who are like, oh, just delete it. And that's what
00:17:48 ◼ ► they think. And now you're switching it around so that rather than catering to the 10%, you're
00:18:06 ◼ ► that's like, well, it's much more important for your app and its longevity and its utility
00:18:17 ◼ ► not telling you, which is even worse. It's way better for you to be taking care of them
00:18:27 ◼ ► I feel like waiting and sort of getting too stuck on old things just because, you know,
00:18:43 ◼ ► And that's kind of, yeah, it's something I've gotten stuck on many times where I get, you
00:18:48 ◼ ► get that negative feedback and you're like, oh, it's, hmm, did I do the wrong thing? And
00:18:52 ◼ ► it's like, as long as you're coming from a place of more people, you know, it's definitely
00:18:55 ◼ ► more people have been complaining, more people are being confused. In my case, I've started
00:19:04 ◼ ► where the pain points are, where the problems are, where people are confused. And then I
00:19:08 ◼ ► make a change and the confusion goes away. Like, that's a huge win. And I feel like you've
00:19:13 ◼ ► done a lot of that in this update, which is just very, you know, very cool. And I think
00:19:28 ◼ ► it's, it's hard because when, when I change something, and when I get feedback, like what
00:19:34 ◼ ► I've gotten over the last couple of days from people who are not happy about it because
00:19:45 ◼ ► you know, the Marcus played button, I, I moved a button on that episode toolbar. I moved
00:19:50 ◼ ► the like, playlist membership kind of button, you know, add to queue, you know, stuff like
00:19:54 ◼ ► that. I moved that from spot number four to spot number two out of the five. I've heard
00:20:00 ◼ ► from a lot of people who, who say, you know, this breaks my muscle memory, where, you know,
00:20:04 ◼ ► now I have to move over here. Or they, they say, where did you put this? They didn't even
00:20:07 ◼ ► bother looking under the, the now, you know, ellipsis menu. And I understand that, like,
00:20:13 ◼ ► I don't break muscle memory lightly. But in this case, I was thinking of like, all right,
00:20:18 ◼ ► well, I have these two actions now, Marcus played and delete, that both effectively delete
00:20:37 ◼ ► two buttons. That's how you get rid of a podcast. And then the left side is acting on that podcast
00:20:42 ◼ ► without getting rid of it. So that's the share button, and the Add to Playlist button. And
00:20:50 ◼ ► toolbar. And so really, the only thing that got worse here was starring, because starring
00:20:55 ◼ ► is now two taps instead of one from that from that location. But something did move. Now,
00:21:00 ◼ ► I'm hearing from a lot of people who are upset about the move, but I think that's going to
00:21:04 ◼ ► be a short term pain, I think give, you know, in two weeks, I think I'm gonna stop hearing
00:21:11 ◼ ► long term here, this temporary negative feedback about that move is going to be gone in a matter
00:21:17 ◼ ► of weeks, probably, or at least mostly gone. Whereas conceptually, the app will be cleaner
00:21:22 ◼ ► and simpler for everyone and for new users, especially forever after this. So it's better
00:21:27 ◼ ► to prioritize for the long term, like what's that what's right here, even if in the short
00:21:32 ◼ ► term, people are going to be a little bit upset, I moved something, you know, but eventually
00:21:40 ◼ ► the now playing screen next. And one of the things I want to do with the now playing screen
00:21:49 ◼ ► is the effects panel, the info, the show notes panel on the chapter panel. I want to move
00:22:24 ◼ ► leave it pure and let them you know, let them learn the new thing. But that will cause short
00:22:28 ◼ ► term pain. And I will hear from a lot of people about that when I do that. But again, the
00:22:43 ◼ ► had something like four or five major changes to the now playing screen, including structural
00:23:01 ◼ ► just not recently. And right now, no one complains about my now playing screen having changed
00:23:23 ◼ ► more usable, and has and then gives me room to add more features, which I want to do there,
00:23:32 ◼ ► Yeah. And I think optimizing for the, like, for the typical user, for the new user, for
00:23:49 ◼ ► a wider and better audience and take better advantage of the every new download you get.
00:23:56 ◼ ► Your goal is to turn that into someone who's using the app all the time, who isn't confused,
00:24:04 ◼ ► like optimizing in some ways for those users, I think just makes a lot of sense. And increasingly,
00:24:13 ◼ ► like me with muscle memory is you'll build a new muscle memory that you know, this happens
00:24:17 ◼ ► almost every year with something in iOS, when they change, they make a change from iOS 14
00:24:33 ◼ ► the nature of muscle memory. It isn't this permanent thing that is completely inflexible.
00:24:42 ◼ ► sort of changing a feature in such a way that the old thing is completely gone and doesn't
00:24:46 ◼ ► exist. Fair enough. That's sort of a bigger deal. But if you just moved it around, don't
00:24:50 ◼ ► do that lightly. But do do it when it makes it better. And when it makes the common case
00:24:55 ◼ ► more obvious and more accessible, makes, you know, he seems like an overall huge win to
00:25:00 ◼ ► Yeah, yeah. I mean, overall, I'm, I'm very, I'm very confident in this. Like, you know,
00:25:25 ◼ ► feeling. But but I think in this case, I think I'm right. And I think the the the press
00:25:33 ◼ ► of people who are, you know, professionals in this area who see tons of apps who review
00:25:45 ◼ ► couple of weeks of feedback is certainly a little bit challenging sometimes. But overall,
00:25:55 ◼ ► like, like you, you think about overcast all the time, you probably go to sleep thinking
00:26:02 ◼ ► yeah, it can take over your mind, like you think a lot about this, you have deep opinions
00:26:29 ◼ ► and being sort of a true expert, and then having an expert opinion and understand that,
00:26:37 ◼ ► know, being silly here. And you can make your certainly not to say you can't make mistakes,
00:26:40 ◼ ► but it's much more likely that you're doing something that is coming from that place of
00:26:53 ◼ ► some of these decisions are right, even though, you know, I might get a temporary blowback
00:27:01 ◼ ► know, that like, I know, in my heart, I know that like, yeah, I've this what this person
00:27:06 ◼ ► is saying, like, you know, some, so many people who who don't use things like Marcus played,
00:27:16 ◼ ► eight years of messages telling me this needs to be its own button. And a lot of people
00:27:23 ◼ ► me, I know from other previous experiences, that anything that is only available via gesture
00:27:28 ◼ ► will never be found by so many people, you know, and there's just all sorts of principles
00:27:31 ◼ ► like that, that like, like, yes, I what you're what you're saying is a decent idea. However,
00:27:37 ◼ ► I have thought of that, or I have tried that, or I have this other information to say, this
00:27:44 ◼ ► of people as you might expect. You know, again, that's something that, you know, basically
00:28:04 ◼ ► have to do a ridiculous thing yesterday to fix some voiceover shortcomings. But that'll
00:28:09 ◼ ► be a story for another time, I think, because I had to basically write my own UI action
00:28:13 ◼ ► wrapper. Okay, because there are so many areas in the API, where like, you want something
00:28:19 ◼ ► similar to UI action, but it's not quite the same subclass. And UI action, hopefully does
00:28:23 ◼ ► not expose its callback in the public API. So if you create a UI action, you cannot use
00:28:31 ◼ ► that to like create anything else from it. So I had to do things like, you know, there's,
00:28:36 ◼ ► UI alert action, which is different from UI action, which is different from UI accessibility
00:28:45 ◼ ► many places in the API where you need something that's like an action, but is not a UI action
00:28:49 ◼ ► class. And so I had to create like the superclass that it's just called FC action. It just has
00:29:00 ◼ ► destructive cancel or not. And then, you know, title, icon, all that stuff. And then that
00:29:13 ◼ ► little things like, oh, voiceover has a weird menu here. How do you fix that? Well, there
00:29:16 ◼ ► goes a day, you know, because the API is really weird about this. But otherwise, other than
00:29:21 ◼ ► that kind of stuff, it's been it's been great. And I'm very happy it's done. So thank you,